“Putney's latest Lost Lord raises the bar for historical romance. A captivating plot, charming characters with great depth of passion and sensuality combine to make this novel an intoxicating and not-to-be-missed read. “ --
Kathe Robin

“Sweeter than honey, and utterly ravishing; I didn’t want to stop reading. But then I never want to stop reading one of Mary Jo Putney’s novels!-- Eloisa James on Loving a Lost Lord

Good news--Not Quite a Wife was #17 on the NYTimes mass market list on September 14, and was #45 on the USAToday. and Library Journal just named Not Quite a Wife on their best 2014 books in Romance. Yayyyyyyyy!

Hi, there—

Not Quite a Wife is now in stores and online. Sixth in my Lord Lords series for Kensington, it's the story of Kirkland, enigmatic spymaster, wealthy shipping magnate, loyal friend, and, as it turns out, long estranged husband. Here's the blurb:

Marry in haste, repent at leisure!

James, Lord Kirkland, owns a shipping fleet, half a London gaming house, and is a ruthlessly effective spymaster. He is seldom self-indulgent…except when it comes to the gentle, indomitable beauty who was once his wife.

Laurel Herbert gave James her heart as an innocent young girl—until she saw him perform an act of shocking violence before her very eyes. That night she left the husband who is far more than the fashionable lord he seems, and he let her go without a word of protest.

Now, ten years later, a chance encounter turns passionate, with consequences that cannot be ignored. But as they try to rebuild what was broken, they must face common enemies and a very uncommon love….

Kensington has given me another gorgeous cover that captures Laurel's gentle beauty, with a piano that symbolizes just how important music is to her--and to Kirkland. Here's an excerpt to sample:

I'm now working on the next book in the series, which has the tentative title of Not Always a Saint. The hero is a man you'll meet in NQAW, and I'm now happily putting him through the wringer. He'll forgive me, eventually!

Holiday Collection

I love writing Christmas stories because they include three of my favorite things—tradition, lots of emotion, and a guaranteed happy ending. That’s why I was delighted to reissue this holiday collection which includes four of my classic historical novellas, plus my only contemporary novella. More here:

Christmas Revels

This is a collection of five classic Christmas novellas: three Regency, one Victorian, and a contemporary. It's now available in an e-book edition on major e-book sites.

Sunshine for Christmas follows a lonely young aristocrat to Italy for the holidays, where he finds something even more precious than sunshine. (The hero, Lord Randolph Lennox, was a secondary character in my RITA winning novel, The Rake.)

The Christmas Cuckoo features level-headed young Meg who goes to the local coaching inn and comes home with the wrong Jack Howard. And like a true cuckoo in the nest, Jack doesn't want to leave!

The Christmas Tart is the tale of Nicole, a young Frenchwoman down on her luck in London, whose stark choice for survival gives her--and her kitten!--a new chance for happiness.

The Black Beast of Belleterre is a Beauty and the Beast Victorian tale of a beautiful young artist and the husband who believes he cannot be loved. Of course he's wrong!

In A Holiday Fling, a British actress and a Hollywood cameraman team up to film a Christmas show for a good cause. Anything that happens between them will be a strictly temporary holiday fling—or might it be more?

What all these tales have in common is two people discovering life’s greatest gift, love, at the happiest time of the year. Enjoy!

Uncommon Vows is now on sale for the first time in an e-edition. My second full-length historical romance, UV is my one and only medieval. I'm not particularly fond of the period--too much violence, a bad time for women, and really bad plumbing. But I wanted to write a subversion of the captivity fantasy, and the medieval period is the only one where the story really works:

Uncommon Vows is the story of Adrian de Lancey, who was wrenched from a monastery before taking final vows because his family was massacred by a brutal rival. Adrian's strength, intelligence, and discipline lead him to an earldom during the twelfth century civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud. But discipline shatters when he finds a lovely young Welsh girl in his forest--a girl whose passionate need for freedom clashes disastrously with his obsessive need to make her his own….

Kim Killion has done another gorgeous cover of Uncommon Vows. With its release, I have only one other backlist novel that isn't available as an e-book. That story, Lady of Fortune, will be released eventually, though I won't promise when! After that, I'll go to work on several collections of shorter works, including one of my Guardian world short stories and novellas.

Audiobooks:

My first independently produced audiobook, Thunder and Roses, was released in October 2013, and my second, The Bargain, became available in February 2014. Dancing on the Wind, the RITA winning second book of my Fallen Angels series is now available. (A note about that. Originally Petals in the Storm was released before DOTW because it was a revised traditional Regency and could be published sooner. However, DOTW is set earlier, so in my e-books I've published them in chronological order.) Order DOTW.

Audiobooks are expensive to make and the learning curve has been steep, but some people consume only audiobooks, so as long as there is enough interest to cover the costs, I'll continue to have new ones made. Slowly.

Other projects: World edition of my Dark Mirror YA Trilogy

Since St. Martin's Press has only North American rights to the Dark Mirror books, I decided to release a world English language e-edition of the trilogy. I was able to buy world illustration rights from the artist who did the covers for Dark Mirror and Dark Passage, but the Dark Destiny cover was assembled from stock images and it wasn't practical for me to duplicate that, so I found a different image and Kim Killion did another dynamite cover for the book.

That's it for now! Most of my indie projects will be wrapped up soon so I can do full immersion into Not Always a Saint.

I promise that one of these days I will release an e-edition Lady of Fortune. A Super-Regency, it will be the last of my reverted novels to be redone as an e-book. After that--collections of short works. Eventually. <G>

Mary Jo

Note on No Longer a Gentleman:

A printing error left out p 362 in some copies of No Longer a Gentleman paperback. The e-book copies are fine I'm very sorry that this happened to my readers.